Problemas en la alimentación del adolescente

an ideal experimental situation it would have been more satisfactory to have used multiple, naive observers to record and rate the subjects' play. However, this was not practical as the visually impaired children under study were spread across a number of special schools throughout England, and raters would require training in using the observation scheme. Therefore, there was the possibility of a familiarity effect on the single ratings made by the experimenter, who knew participants and their likely qualities of performance well by the time of the actual formal observations. Some check on this was provided by the use of a second rater for a number of the observations, on four children who were at the most local school. These second ratings confirmed that judgements were made reliably by the independent judges.

The special education setting itself may have posed an indirect problem in gaining a true record of the children's abilities to interact with peers. Basically, children's opportunities for free-play are dictated by the attitudes of supervising teachers and other staff, as well as the availability of space and supervisory persoimel, and school policy. Consequently there is much variability among schools and indeed classes in the space and freedom that disabled children are allowed in free-play situations, more so than in mainstream schools. Often for safety or other reasons such 'free'-play is quite constrained by the close monitoring of children's activities and interactions. This factor of the strong influence of any adults present was also emphasised by Lord (1984) and McHale (1983), who noted how adults often initiate interactions in these contexts.

The measure of the child's level of emotional tone is an indication of his or her independent affective state, yet also is representative of emotional tone in relation, that is, in interaction with others. The finding of characteristic placidi^ of emotional tone for the less socially able blind children might

1981). In a comparable observation of the social behaviours of children with autism, Attwood et al. (1988) distinguished the following characteristics: lack of modulation of speech, absence of facial expressiveness, poverty of bodily gestures, limp posture, and what was called an overall ”woodenness". All of these features have also been described in the behaviour of many totally blind children, a potentially significant observation that will be given some attention in the final discussion. SuSice to say at this point that there are a number of factors specific to visually impaired children to be borne in mind. Many of the physical behaviours described have been noted before in visually impaired, particularly totally blind children, which bear no relation to their relative level of cognitive performance (e.g. Norris et al., 1957; Warren, 1994, Chapter Two). As discussed in Chapter One, with the absence of visual cues from totally blind children there is always a difficulty in judging their exact point of interest and attention at any given moment. A child may actually be keenly listening and learning from the interaction, perhaps unconcerned to react physically, or unsure how to assert him or herself. It is therefore important, as a general experimental principle with visually impaired participants, to directly engage them and draw out their levels of abilities in the social and cognitive domains under investigation. There must be awareness of the difference between actual cognitive inabilities and the influence of more social-psychological (or even simple sensori-motor) factors, which might make a blind child reluctant to express his or her genuine abilities. This may also be relevant in considering blind children's social use of language. Expressly, perhaps the intermediate category of 'non-specifically outward directed' language may be characteristic of a non-specific, yet still socially interactive attempt to make any contact, maybe a preliminary enquiry to check who is there, with the potential in mind of further interactive possibilities.

SUMMARY

The aim in this chapter was to explore a particular facet of blind children’s social functioning, their interpersonal relating. The intention was to observe and rate the children across a wide range of discrete and carefully defined criteria of social and play behaviour. This tested the reliability and robustness of the original groupings of children made in the previous chapter, on the basis of teachers’ assessments of their general qualities of interpersonal relatedness. The systematic observations also

delineated particular facets of behaviour within the domain of interpersonal relatedness and explored which of these discriminated the two groups.

There was a pattern of group differences found across the range of criteria in social engagement, emotional tone, social play and social language use, such that the original groupings were found to differentiate blind children for their qualities of interpersonal relating. The next step was to begin to assess the children's abilities in the other area of social functioning, involving their social understanding, firstly by probing them with explicit questions about the nature of'mental' functioning. Using the ‘high social’ and ‘low social’ groupings it would be possible to see whether connections can be established between the children’s qualities of specifically social relating and understanding.

CHAPTER FOUR: UNDERSTANDING MENTAL

EVENTS: